Does a contact list constitute CRM functionality? How about integration of that contact list with an e-mail client and a salesperson's daily schedule? According to Microsoft, the answer is yes. And according to those who know the customers Microsoft is targeting, the software maker probably is right. "One of the things we're seeing is Microsoft trying to spin CRM as being more of a day-to-day type function as part of Outlook, Ben Holtz, CEO of Microsoft CRM partner Green Beacon Solutions told CRM Daily. And the reason the strategy just may work is that the marketplace desperately needs effective competitors to highly successful, stand-alone products like Best Software's Act!.
It All Begins with SFA
As a software niche, CRM began with sales-force automation. It makes sense, then, that the field's downstream movement toward smaller companies would begin in the SFA arena. Introducing tools that reside on salespeople's desktops and make their daily tasks easier is perhaps the best way to do that, Holtz says. And those products must be as easy to use as the tools those people have been using for years -- Act! and SalesLogix, for example. There was a bit of negative reaction among consulting partners to the business-contact manager tool in Outlook, said Holtz. But Microsoft presented it to partners by explaining that it is trying to build its CRM business at the low end by adding such tools as these. The customers that become accustomed to them will be ripe for more advanced CRM functionality, goes the logic. And Microsoft will be ready to sell it to them.
News source: NewsFactor
